Imagine that your mother attempted a
self-induced abortion by beating on your bastard ass and failed miserably… Not a
lot of people can say that and live to tell the story of ‘winning’ the mother of
all wars, surviving the bullying tactics of three American presidents and
maintaining a ridiculously tyrannical regime on an entire nation for over 25
years. To most he is the Butcher of Baghdad but to his terrified subjects he was
known as Uncle Saddam.
Saddam Hussein’s impressive resume includes allegedly committing murder at the
tender age of 13, actively participating in coups and countercoups during his
20s, ascending to Presidency of Iraq in 1979, an eight year war (backed by,
surprise surprise! The US of A!) with neighboring Iran and instigating the Gulf
War, wherein he had the gall to send over a couple of scud missiles to Tel Aviv
just to remind the Israelis how much he despised their existence. He is also one
of the few contemporary leaders who systematically slayed his own people: In
1988, Saddam ordered the extermination of over 30 000 Northern Kurds with
chemical weapons because they posed a threat to his regime. And let’s not forget
the tens of thousands that he’s had executed and tortured as well as the million
plus that he allowed to die during wartime. All the while he was maxin’ relaxin’
at his many palaces across the country with women and endless bottles of Jack.
Saddam’s politics really were the politics of revenge, as one of his biographies
is titled. Coming from dirt-poor origins, he despises the rich and has made
every necessary step to make the lives of those in the more privileged brackets
of Iraqi society as wretched of an experience as possible. He has built an
impressive empire based on a fictionally grandiose character of Stalinesque
proportions by marketing himself as a folk hero for the lower classes (who
constitute his loyal fans) as well as the combined reincarnation of various
ancient Mesopotamian kings and Arab heroes from the past. While he starved his
own people, he threw massive birthday parties showing off his exploits from the
Oil For Food program. Many Arabs consider him to be a hero who stood defiantly
in the face of imperialist powers but the fact of the matter is he’ s caught in
a web of paranoid megalomania and his lust for power must be satisfied at all
costs. Saddam was once quoted saying, “There is no law. The law is anything I
write on a scrap of paper”. Where did this maniac come from and how did he get
to where he’s at? Here’s the lowdown…
In the beginning…
Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti was born in 1937 in a hick part of Iraq near Tikrit, a
lower class rural town called “Al-Awja” which literally means “crooked”. His
name tells a great deal about his remarkable destiny: Saddam, a very uncommon
name, comes from the Arabic a word “Istidam” – a collision or confrontation- and
“Sadmah”-which implies great misfortune. Some say his mother gave him that name
because she didn’t want him. Hence the name change as it would have been a bad
PR move had he remained true to his Al-Awja roots: His name would have literally
translated to ‘The crooked trouble-maker, son of Hussein.’ As the story goes,
Saddam’s father Hussein disappeared or left his supposedly overbearing mother
Subha before he was born and very little is known about him. Saddam was the only
child out of that union and his mother later married again twice and Saddam
lived in the shadow of his stepbrothers. There have been rumors of Subha being
the local ho at the time and that Saddam was born out of wedlock but naturally,
any talk of this sort in the wrong place at the wrong time would have lead to
one’s torture/execution by various creative methods. Saddam adores his mother
(hence his frequent use of the word ‘mother’ in his public addresses to glorify
his actions; ‘mother of all wars” etc…) and has built a shrine for her in Al-Awja,
honoring her with the title ‘Mother of All Militants”.
Saddam lived in total destitution as a child. He told his loyalist biographer
Iskandar that he came from ‘a modest home’ but Saddam and the fam were actually
the epitome of Bedouin trash. According to old photographs from Al-Awja, the
clan lived in a mudbrick dwelling that was filthy and way too cramped for a
family of 5, in addition to a couple of chickens, two sheep and a donkey. It’s
said that they were so poor that they couldn’t even afford to purchase shoes for
little Saddam and he spent a lot of his time stealing livestock to support the
family. Remote areas like Awja are the lowest of the low, with a highly
underdeveloped infrastructure in comparison to the rest of the country. The
stifling conditions of poverty gave way to crime and in the outdated tribal
style of Bedouin mentality and murder was a common occurrence (i.e. “You fucked
my sister! I’ll kill your mother!”). Diseases like tapeworm and malaria were
widespread. According to biographer Said K. Aburish, this way of living in the
Middle East produced a specific breed of children “ [They] spent most of their
time outside in narrow, dung-filled alleys […] and formed gangs, stole from
farmers and each other, and conducted feuds and clan wars which often lasted for
years. [They were] tough, courageous and vicious at an early age”.
To make things worse, it was Subha’s second husband –Hassan ‘The Liar’, as the
neighborhood called him- who traumatized Saddam with incessant physical and
emotional abuse, thus providing the West with an irrational nemesis (sometimes
ally) and the Iraqi people with an emotionally unstable tyrant to reckon with.
Hassan routinely excluded him from the rest of the family and put him to work as
farmhand and shepherd, tasks that were too demanding for a child of 6 to be
responsible for.
Saddam did not have the privilege of education- at least not at the standard
age. When he was 8 or 10, his mother sent him to live with his uncle, Khairallah,
a schoolteacher who was a member of a rebel movement at the time, and his two
sons. Little Saddam envied his literate cousins and strove to get an education.
His perseverance paid off in the end but once he started attending school, all
the kids in class made fun of him for being older, in addition to not having a
father (which is generally frowned upon in Arab society). Little did his
classmates know that their constant ridicule would spark the first flame of
relentlessly vindictive behavior. Being taunted for being big, barefoot and a
bastard could only intensify the sense of hostility Saddam had for the world.
Saddam’s trademark sense of paranoia and suspicion began to surface at this
time. It is widely believed that it was at this time that Saddam committed his
first act of murder, at the age of 12 or 13, when he gunned down a relative for
reasons of honor. Nevertheless, Saddam Hussein was known to be an exceptionally
clever young man with a stunning memory that could very well be a photographic
one, as his history would later suggest. The eventual demise of some of those
class bullies when Saddam came to power is proof that he never forgot even the
slightest insult.
During his teenage years Saddam became increasingly obsessed with revolutionary
politics and Stalinist ideology. Having failed the entrance exam for Baghdad’s
Military Academy- a way out of the lower classes for bright young Iraqis- only
added to Saddam’s sense of inadequacy. Feeling dejected he began taking part in
several anti-government demonstrations and eventually joined the Ba’ath Party.
He studied Egypt’s Nasser and had dreams of a fully Arab Iraq, independent of
the British powers that had dissected and infected the Middle East with
political instability for so long. In 1959, he was involved in the assassination
attempt on Iraqi leader Abdul Karim Qassem’s life. Being the self-proclaimed
superstar hero that he is, Saddam has had a film produced, called The Long Days,
which recounts this event in all its supposed glory. In the movie, he’s depicted
as having been severely wounded by the incident, courageously stitching up his
own bullet wounds up with his own bloody hands. More credible sources say that
what actually happened was quite unglamorous; he played a rather minor role in
what was really a very clumsy operation. In any event, Saddam then fled to Egypt
where he and his Ba’athist buddies devised what would be a successful coup with
the CIA. Qassem was finally overthrown in 1963 and Saddam climbed the political
ladder ruthlessly throughout the late 60s. He finally appointed himself ‘The
Mother of All Leaders” in 1979.
The fine details of Saddam Hussein’s childhood have paved the way to his Mafioso
style of political rule: The family reigns supreme. Due to his unshakeable lack
of trust in anybody else, the former Iraqi dictator always had several members
of his immediate and extended family help him run the country. His uncle
Khairallah was immediately appointed minister of defense and later on, Saddam’s
two sons Qusay and Udday were given the responsibilities of handling the dreaded
security apparatus and various other committees respectively. The military
consists of loyal brutes from poor backgrounds who were devoted to Saddam’s
cause and consequently, a lavish lifestyle. At one point there were so many
“Al-Tikritis” crawling around the upper echelons of Iraqi power circles that it
was becoming a bit too conspicuous. So a law was passed that abolished the
existing system of last names- that which indicated a person’s hometown- an put
an end to the problem, although the official reason behind the law was a
supposed move to drop the vestiges of tribalism. The late Iraqi regime was based
on an intricate pyramid relationship based on familial and tribal ties. In Iraq,
if you weren’t a Tikriti, you might as well have been a prime suspect for
conspiring against the government.
Saddam frequently had all his male relatives, from Khairallah and his sons to
Saddam’s in-laws, take over high posts within the government regardless of the
fact that they were unqualified for the job. His son in law Hussein Kamil, for
example, was given the responsibility of supervising the Atomic Energy
Administration although his knowledge of science was limited to that of high
school physics. Of course, crossing Saddam, regardless of relations, was the
ultimate sin as Kamil’s horrible fate proved. In 1996, he and his brother
defected and stupidly thought it would be a good idea to take Saddam’s
daughters, their wives, with them to Jordan. A few weeks later, after Saddam
publicly announced that Kamil and co. would be pardoned upon their return home,
the two men were found riddled with bullets on the outskirts of Baghdad, the
official cause of death being an honor killing by the Kamil family.
It’s Lonely at the Top
Saddam’s life during the past few years revolved around his manic paranoia:
Phone taps were a given and many Iraqis have been executed for using his name in
vain. His public appearances had become less frequent and he had a crew of
look-alikes –who underwent routine plastic surgery to remix those not-so-Saddamish
features- go out on various public functions. Having built over 21
over/underground palaces, he never slept in the same bed for more than two
nights at a time. His food tasters were easily replaceable. Many speculate that
Saddam himself was the mastermind behind the assassination attempt on his eldest
son Udday (even more of a reckless thug/rapist/crook but that’s a whole other
article) in 1996 as he was getting way too crazy and becoming an embarrassment
to the Hussein family. So to eradicate any possibilities of Udday taking over
the regime, Saddam allegedly did what he always does: Nip the problem in the bud
and have the guy spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. In Hussein’s
delusional mind, he is a savior for the Arab people and the best thing that ever
happened to Iraq. Therefore he is envied and is a live target for the dissidents
of the country as well as foreign authorities. His motto is maintaining power by
any means necessary, even if it means the elimination of half the population of
Iraq. Always keepin’ it realpolitik, Saddam has said “If there is a person,
there is a problem. If there is no person, there is no problem”.
Aside from his outstanding qualities of a master tactician and organizer, Saddam
is well known for his eccentric quirks. If your wife happened to be hot, you’d
better be prepared to give up the booty. His second wife Samira was actually
courted after Saddam personally asked her first husband to step aside. Saddam
then duly gave him a raise after the wedding. And if you happened to be a member
of his circle, be it the army or the elite of Iraqi society, deodorant was a
matter of life or death, as ‘His Excellency’ deemed body odors to be so
offensive that it was worth murder. There was a time when Saddam’s subordinates
were allowed to greet him with the standard two kisses on the cheeks, but he
grew so wary of bacteria that he demanded to be greeted with two tender pecks on
either sides of his chest, close to the armpits. His emphasis on cleanliness is
an extension of his serious fixation on security.
Saddam has an addictive personality and alcohol was the drug of choice. But when
the trials of being a tyrant were taking their toll, he realized he had to curb
his appetite for Jack Daniels with sedatives. Naturally, the situation only
worsened. According to a former palace doctor, Saddam needed to be regularly
tended to for withdrawal symptoms that lead the Iraqi dictator to raging fits.
On one occasion, the doctor was called in and duly put Saddam to sleep only to
find a fine young lady drenched in blood in the bathroom next door.
As my aunt reproachfully puts it (now that she’s a Canadian citizen who has the
liberty to say it): “Saddam only loves himself”. Saddam’ s cool and calculating
rule developed into quite a case of rabid egomania. His propaganda machine
became so extensive it was impossible to avoid his face on a day-to-day basis in
Iraq: his pictures were dispersed all over the country from office posters to
gigantic murals and his face is on the first page of every school book. He even
had a statue of his likeness erected in a different neighborhood every year for
his birthday- which was declared a national holiday. They say that there are 22
million pictures of Saddam in Iraq, one for every existing Iraqi to have and to
keep.
In true Big Brother style, the man made a point to appear on Iraqi television
five times a day to remind the Iraqi people of his ominous presence. He has even
jokingly advised the nation with his trademark creepily hearty chuckle, to stick
up his picture of him on their TV screens if they’re broken. And its not like he
had anything profound to say: His monologues were an expression of his obsession
with personal hygiene, doting pieces of fatherly advice for the nation to
“remember to never wear the same clothes twice before washing and to shower at
least once a day” or to “always brush ones teeth frequently, and if a tooth
brush is not available, to use one’s finger”. According to my teenage cousin who
managed to flee Iraq with her mother a few years ago, the regime had recently
published a compilation entitled, “The Sayings of His Excellency Our Leader”, a
book that Iraqi high school students were required to memorize and a bible for
all future Ba’athists. The first piece of advice goes a little something like
this: “Do not respect he whom you suspect is doubtful of your intentions towards
him.” Word to the mother of all philosophers.
Another example of his campaign of self-aggrandizement is Saddam’s architecture
fetish. During the eighties he commissioned the erection of the Celebration
Arch: An grotesque edifice consisting of two sword-bearing arms –modeled after
his very own of course- towering over a main street in Baghdad (see picture). At
the base of the two structures are large collections of military headgear that
once belonged to captured Iranian soldiers. Saddam even had the nerve to
‘restore’ the tower of Babel, one of the most precious archeological sites of
earlier civilizations. Every brick that was laid in the construction of this
magnificent building was inscribed with King Abushednazzer’s name but at
renovation time, Saddam had his people go in there and inscribe his name of
every 100th brick instead. Saddam’s last (and unfinished) project is of
unprecedented magnitude: While the people suffered tremendous poverty, he gave
the go ahead to begin erecting the biggest mosque in the world, with minarets
that stand taller than the Eiffel Tower (look up Freud for a deeper analysis).
To complement the mosque, an artificial island was to be built carrying the
contours of a very special somebody’s thumbprint. Not only is Saddam a leader
among Arab leaders, the idea was that he would be the Muslim that would get the
closest humanly possible to Allah.
Saddam Today
Years ago rumors circulated about the Iraqi president’s diagnosis with cancer
but nothing has been confirmed. If anything he’d merely lost a little weight and
suffers from slight back problems due to old age. Before the Iraq War, some
Iraqis I interviewed speculated that he might in fact be dead and that a gang of
thugs- most probably led by his other psychotic son Qusay- is running the
country with the help of his look-alikes and reaping the financial benefits of
the regime. Although Uncle Sam still hasn’t been able to prove to the world the
official basis for invading Iraq, many Iraqis believe that the Americans found
the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction in the basement of a farm in
Tikrit when they captured Saddam Hussein on the 13th of December, 2003.
Saddam took Iraq out of its glorious days and dragged it into its darkest era.
The UN sanctions were supposedly implemented after the Gulf War ‘to destabilize
the regime’ but instead, the Iraqi people have been isolated from the rest of
the world and been deprived of basic needs for over 10 years. Iraq once boasted
the highest literacy rate in the Arab world and due to economic sanctions and
routine Western destruction of the country’s infrastructure, has been forced
into the lower brackets of international living standards. Iraq has been bombed
back to the Stone- Age and at least two generations have been wasted. And yet
‘the mother of all dictators’ showed no signs of backing down right up to the
last minute of the Iraq War…
If only his mother had a coat hanger.
